when the power co. trims your trees

 
Portland, Oregon
(Thanks, Nate, for sharing this -- every time I look at it, I chuckle!)

expiration dates

The milk is bordering on crossing over to the dark side again: expiration date 3/18/10. Sometimes it makes sense to spend twice as much on the organic stuff, if only because it inexplicably lasts way more than twice as long.

Hot chocolate last night, chocolate milk tonight. I bet you didn't know that chocolate milk is one of my favorite things.

There was a particular autumn that I spent too many Friday evenings on trains going out to New Haven, Connecticut, but the boy waiting there kept a container of Nestle Quick in otherwise empty cupboards just for me.

He would joke about keeping me in a cage in his living room, singing off-key Ani while perched on a swing, taking quick sips from a chocolate-milk-filled water bottle.

This only struck me as uncomfortably odd months later, long after we had parted ways. At the time it just seemed oddly endearing.

a day in the life of NYC

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo

(Thanks, Andy!)

word of the day

Flabbergasting. As in, "Don't be flabbergasting over that drunken email. It was actually (relatively) lucid."

Still, just as a general rule, anything timestamped 3:56 AM (even the night that Daylight Savings Time kicks in) probably should not be sent.

'and i am standing on the deck in the rain...'

'and i am standing on the deck in the rain
listening to jazz,
smoking a reefer cigarette,
and i swear, i swear i didn't think of you once...'

(The Jealous Girlfriends, Lay Around)

haruni shawl

Knitpicks Kettle-Dyed Stroll Yarn, Spruce, 1.75 skeins
Pattern by Emily Ross, available via Ravelry or Knitpicks

may contain

'i drink my liquor from the palm of a child who spoke in tongues...'

Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous Takes Own Life


(Piano Fire, 2001)


(Painbirds, 1999)


(King of Nails, 2001)

nostalgia

You can tell by the way they've stopped turning them on that the College Walk Christmas lights will be coming down soon. I was walking to the Journalism Library this evening and the lights, now dark, reminded me of the once ubiquitous unwound cassette tape you used to see dangling and writhing and tangling in tree branches, flashing and flickering under streetlights and the sun.

It made me a little sad to think that kids today will never see this phenomenon, and will never have a similar moment of intense nostalgia and longing (unless we start stringing up our obsolete CD collections, leave them dangling and twirling and refracting in the light).

get up

I've been wracking my brain this evening, trying to remember the title, or the author, or at the very least a line, of the poem that Jeff Rundell read at my father's memorial service, down by the water's edge at Mohegan Lake.

I remember Jeff's voice, that deep and resonant voice of his, though only fragments of the poem remain -- it's been awhile. But those fragments were enough, in the end, in this miraculous internet age. Snow. I am not there. Weep. It's a little cheesier than I remember (the seventeen years in between that adolescent memory and now, this moment, have perhaps taken away a small part of my ability to be moved to tears by such things), and a little less beautiful. Even still though, years later and feeling jaded, there are images that resonate.

I've been thinking about the memorial my boy is helping to organize for his brother next weekend out on the western rim -- an afternoon potluck full to the brim with local brews and delicious food and live local bluegrass and, I imagine, an uncomfortable and beautiful and heartbreaking and cathartic mash of laughter and tears and tall tales and rage.

I was going to post something to the invite page for this potluck since I won't be there, a song or a poem or something, but felt too self-conscious. The sad songs were too sad and dreary, the poems weren't quite right (though this poem has been one of my favorite poems for years now, and came close but ultimately was rejected for being too long).

Back in November of '99 a boy I knew in college drove his car into a tree. I went home to Brooklyn the night I found out, and I listened to this song. A lot. And so I share it here*:



And when the body finally starts to let go,
let it all go at once! Not piece by piece,
but like a whole bucket of stars
dumped into the universe.
(Sleater-Kinney, Get Up!)

*Also, this video was directed by Miranda July, who, in my ever humble opinion, rocks.

guest post: moments

I love these moments in life, where every time you find yourself lost in a thought it feels like hitting up against something, like pushing against a closed door with a toothpick instead of a battering ram. Pushing against what once seemed such stark dichotomies, science versus spirit, writing versus math. What I keep hitting is this: that things which at once seem discordant can be so much the same. I keep discovering beauty where once there was none. I keep seeing the equal sign as a metaphor, a truth I feel like I am coming to slowly, but with more certainty and art than I could ever have imagined in those two little lines. And like the equal sign, there are parallels everywhere -- in a moment that seems at once hilarious and unnerving (what DO I bow down to? Science? Physics?? Jo Ann Beard?) or a state of mind that I can laugh about even as I feel real anxiety. Here is a moment to push back against, to find pleasure in. To live through -- physically, spiritually, truly -- and find some glory in just existing. I know that something will come of these funny emotions, something that might feel like acceptance, or excitement, or that certainty when you know what you're going to do next, but right now, I'm not really waiting for it. Just letting it come slowly is part of this bigger thing, and even when it's awful, it's great.

(Erica S.)

transgressions

Dan and I were meandering our way through the newish (and shockingly, wonderfully, amazingly emptyish) Whole Foods on Columbus & 97th yesterday evening. I picked out a bag of Stacy's pita chips and a jar of salsa, but was taken aback after glancing up to see the look of complete and utter shock on Dan's face. Apparently tortilla chips are for salsa and pita chips are for hummus, and ne'er the twain shall mix.

because sometimes the easiest way down is still damned scary

(Thanks, Erik!)

oh how this makes me smile

(Dr. Dog covering Architecture in Helsinki's Heart It Races)